November 1989 — German Democratic Republic allows Eastern German residents to travel freely. Thousands head to West Berlin and the public tears down the Berlin Wall.
October 1990 — The German Democratic Republic is absorbed into the Federal Republic of Germany.
December 1990 — Germany has its first unified elections since 1933. Helmut Kohl becomes the chancellor of a unified Germany.
August 1991 — Arms dealer Karl Heinz Schreiber allegedly gives US$516,000 to the treasurer of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU—Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands), Walter Leiser Kiep, at a Swiss shopping center. The issue was not investigated until the Social Democratic Party (SPD—Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) starts to revive it in October 1999.
Social Democrats allege that the donations were linked to giving tanks to Saudi Arabia. Later, Kiep is charged with tax evasion. He is released after saying that he placed the donation into the trustee account of CDU.
December 1992 — The lower house of Parliament votes in favor of the Maastricht Treaty of the European Union. This treaty modifies the former treaties and political union is claimed for the first time.
May 1994 — Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, alleges that all heart centers in Germany except for one had accepted bribes from producers of heart valves. Some 250 hospitals and about 1,500 doctors and administrative directors are accused of accepting bribes.
July 1994 — Roman Herzog replaces President Richard von Weizsacker, who had been holding that position since 1984.
August 1994 — The military presence of Russian army ends in the former German Democratic Republic.
September 1994 — The last troops of the Allied Forces, including U.S., French and British troops, leave Germany.
September 1998 — Gerhard Schroder wins the elections over Helmut Kohl and becomes the new chancellor, after forming a coalition with the Green Party.
November 1998 — Germany ratifies the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD) Anti-Bribery Convention, which prohibits bribery of foreign officials by businessmen.
January 1999 — Ten European Union countries, including Germany, transition to the new euro monetary system, which will become the national currency of EU countries after being used in financial markets for three years.
January 1999 — Germany signs the European Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. Germany is one of the six countries that still have not ratified the convention.
April 1999 — The German government begins to moving the formal seat of the federal government from Bonn to Berlin. The move is completed in 2001.
May 1999 — Johannes Rau is elected as president. He takes office in July
September 1999 — A Connecticut money manager who was suspected of embezzling more than US$200 million from insurance companies in the United States, Martin R.Frankel, is arrested in Hamburg.
November 1999 — Germany signs the European Civil Law Convention on Corruption.
December 1999 — Helmut Kohl, the first chancellor of unified Germany, faces accusations of accepting money worth US$1 million for CDU's slush fund. After admitting to taking the money, he is forced to pay a US$142,000 fine. He is rescued from prosecution due to his parliamentary immunity and refuses to disclose the names of donators. He also attracts criticism from CDU officials and is forced to resign as the honorary chair of the party.
March 2000 — Angela Merkel becomes the first woman and first person from Eastern Germany to be elected to lead the CDU.
August 2000 — The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Alabama announces that the German Construction Company Philip Holzman AG must pay a US$30 million fine for its role in rigging bids on construction contracts supported by USAID in Egypt.
January 2002 — The euro becomes the national currency in Germany and in other 15 European Union countries.
July 2002 — Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping is fired for accepting payments worth 140,000 marks (US$72,000) from a public relations firm. It is alleged that consultant Moritz Hunzinger put the money into an account owned by the Defense minister.
December 2003 — Germany signs the U.N. Convention against Corruption but has not yet ratified it.
May 2004 — The former head of International Monetary Fund, Horst Koehler, is elected president.
March 2004 — Hamburg enacts a law that allows the establishment of a blacklist of companies that are found guilty of corruption.
March 2004 — The president of the German first division soccer club, Karl Heinz Wildmoser, and his son Karl Heinz Wildmoser, Jr. are arrested on charges of receiving US$3.4 million in bribes from the Austrian construction company that is building the new soccer stadium.
March 2004 — Based on media reports, police and officials from prosecutor's office raid the country offices and the headquarters of the state supported rail-operator, Deutsche Bahn. The raid is part of an investigation into a contract signed between Deutsche Bahn and the state of Brandenburg in 2002.
March-April 2004 — Special Task Forces, including prosecutors, police officers and accountants to fight corruption, are formed in the states of Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.
December 2004 — CDU General Secretary Laurenz Meyer and Labor Affairs Spokesman Herman-Josef Arendtz resign after admitting that they received unreported payments from the energy company RWE.
January 2005 — Member of Parliament Jann-Peter Janssen, who had been a worker unions representative at Volkswagen before he entered politics in1994, resigns after the German automaker discloses that two SPD members of Parliament, four regional assembly lawmakers and 300 local politicians were on its payroll until the end of 2004.
February 2005 — A German soccer game fixing scandal widens, after German soccer referee Robert Hoyzer testifies that he took bribes to favor one team over the other and implicates three referees and 14 players. Hoyzer and another referee, Dominik Marks, who was mentioned by Hoyzer, are arrested.
March 2005 — A soccer player for club Chemnitz, Steffan Karl, is arrested in connection to the ongoing match fixing scandal. He is suspected of fixing a game between SC Padermorn and Chemnits in May 2004.
June 2005 — German Parliament enacts the Federal Freedom of Information Act. Germany's upper house approves the bill in July.
August 2005 — The court sentences Holger Pfahls, the former deputy Defense minister of the government led by Helmut Kohl, to two years and three months prison. He admitted that he received US$2.42 million from a German-Canadian businessman in connection to several arms deals while serving in the Kohl's government.
September 2005 — Federal elections are held.
November 2005 — Angela Merkel is sworn in as the first female chancellor of Germany. She replaces Gerhard Schroder, who has held the post since November 1998.
December 2005 — Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder announces that he will work for Gazprom, a Russian energy behemoth. He says that he is going to manage the consortium under which a pipeline will be built under the Baltic Sea to carry Russian gas to Western Europe, a project that he supported while in office.
March 2006 — Prosecutors accuse two former employees of Siemens AG, Andres Kley and Horst Vigener, of offering bribes worth US$6 million to guarantee gas-turbine supply contracts with Enel, an Italian Energy Company. Later in May both receive suspended sentences.
February 2007 — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development blacklists Lahmeyer, a German engineering consultancy company, which was found guilty of graft on a World Bank project in Lesotho. This is the first time that an international development bank punished a company for a corruption-related project financed by another international organization.
March 2007 — The trial of the former Siemens AG employees begins and both admit to the offence.
June 2007 — Hans Juergen Uhl, a former SDP member of Parliament, receives a two-year suspended sentence and a fine of 576,000 euros (US$817,000) for perjury regarding his testimony, in which he denied having paid prostitutes with company funds.
June 2007 — The Interior minister of the state of Saxony ousts the head of the state's domestic intelligence agency, Rainer Stock, after increasing public pressure about a scandal that includes accusations of state officials' involvement in crimes, including child prostitution, large scale bribery, and interference in court trial.
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